I Am My Own Orchestra

I played the cello in my childhood. I chose it over the violin or  viola because it was bigger and bolder, and had a voice that more resembled mine. I sometimes regretted that decision when I found myself lugging my cello to school and back during Montana winters. Mostly though, I loved my cello, the mellow sound it made when I accidentally played it correctly, and the way it felt to play a tune with the other people in the orchestra. I thank my mother for tolerating the squeaks I undoubtedly produced, and for renting my instrument, something I took for granted when it was likely a hardship for her.

In seventh grade, when I went to school at Centennial Junior High in Boulder, Colorado, the orchestra teacher was Mrs. Ford. I loved her, and she inspired me to want to practice. We lived on my mother’s family’s farm at the time. My mother was in her “season of loss,” that stage in life when one seems to be losing everything. She had recently lost her mother, then her job, and now was taking care of her sister, Cynthia, who was dying of breast cancer in a nearby  care facility.

We lived in what one of my classmates described in a hushed voice as a “shack,” as she asked her mother with urgency to please come pick her up. In truth, it was an old dairy barn, a little worse for the wear, which my uncle Neil had repurposed as his home away from home. It had a rudimentary kitchen, a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. It smelled of my uncle’s cigars, was filthy, rodent infested, and a definite step down from the big house that we had lived in Billings, Montana on Clark Street. Even so, I didn’t think it was all that bad.

With no job, and no house, my mother still rented my cello, and finally, I was getting tolerably good at playing it. Mrs. Ford had moved me into second chair. Gretchen, the first chair cellist was definitely better than I was, but she had been taking private lessons since the second grade. I still felt that I could catch her, so every day, I closed myself into the bedroom of the dairy barn and practiced diligently.

My mother was collecting unemployment at the time, and to fulfill the requirements for receiving it, she had to apply for three jobs per week. Given her situation with her sister, she really did not want to find a job right away, and if she did find a job, it needed to be close enough to Boulder that she could be near her sister. With a Ph.D. in English, the availability of college-level teaching jobs in the area were sparse anyway, and so she ended up applying for jobs that she was over-qualified for, which included one temporary job teaching at the Secondary School in Idaho Springs. To her chagrin, she was offered the job, and had to take it. The job would start after Christmas.

In the meantime, my aunt Cynthia had passed away. It didn’t make sense to stay on the farm and to commute to Idaho Springs, especially during the winter. And so, we moved, and I had to say good-bye to my beloved music teacher, Mrs. Ford, the bright spot of 7th grade. When I arrived at my new school, the one where my mother was teaching, we learned that they did not have an orchestra. My mother felt terrible, and offered me the choice of continuing the cello with private lessons, but I declined, knowing that without a Mrs Ford, or a first chair dangling in front of me, without the satisfaction of playing in an orchestra, I would lose interest very quickly.

After a few years, I lost my desire to ever return to the cello, and when I was in college, where I studied some music theory, I came to wish that instead I had played the piano, an instrument that one could not easily carry from place to place, and that had an even bigger and deeper voice than a cello. The piano was a perfect instrument that embodied and illustrated all of music theory. It was a stringed instrument and a percussion instrument all-in-one.

And so it was that I came to purchase an upright grand piano the moment my son was old enough, and had exhibited the slightest musical talent and inclination.  At first, he was excited about piano lessons, and then he realized it was going to require some work, and then I managed to convince him that learning to play the piano was as important as learning to swim, or to breathe. He was getting pretty good around the time that his beloved piano teacher, his Mrs. Ford, passed away somewhat suddenly. I never could get him to go back to lessons after that. It made him too sad.

Our piano, a 1908 Mason and Hamlin piano with a lovely curly Mahogany case, and real ivory keys, sits squarely in the middle of our house, where it has sat untuned, and not played for the past five or more years. It is a beautiful piece of furniture. I now realize, in my own season of loss, that I did not buy the piano for him, but for myself. On a recent visit with my sister-in-law, Valeriya, a piano teacher, I casually mentioned that one of the things I was planning for my new year and my new life as an unemployed person was to learn to play the piano. She sprung into action. Within minutes I was laden with the instructional tools that I would need to teach myself the piano. She assured me that I could do it.

I began my self-teaching two weeks ago, and have made excellent progress. I eagerly await the arrival of the piano tuner because I know I will sound even better with a tuned piano. The most important thing that I have discovered since starting to learn the piano is that with a piano, you can be your own orchestra, and that you are always  sitting in first chair, no matter how poorly you play!